iRODS Consortium Welcomes NASA’s Atmospheric Science Data Center

February 9, 2015

CHAPEL HILL, N.C., Feb. 9 — The Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., has signed an agreement to become the newest member of the iRODS Consortium. The iRODS Consortium is a membership organization of users and service providers that sustains the integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS) as free open source data management software.

NASA’s ASDC processes, archives, and distributes Earth science data pertaining to radiation budget, clouds, aerosols, and tropospheric chemistry. The center was established in 1991 to support NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) as part of NASA’s Earth Science enterprise and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. It is one of several Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) sponsored by NASA as part of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). The ASDC currently supports more than 44 projects and is home to more than 1,700 data sets.

“We archive and distribute massive amounts of data, products that are vital to understanding atmospheric science, including phenomena such as weather patterns, the impact of climate change, the distribution of particles in the atmosphere, and air quality,” said Brandi Quam, Deputy Head of the ASDC. “iRODS is a tool that can help us manage that data from ingest through long-term archiving and preservation. The future of iRODS is important to us. As a member of the Consortium, not only do we plan to contribute to its long-term sustainability, but we will also have a voice in the development of new versions of iRODS, further increasing its value to organizations with missions like ours.”

The iRODS Consortium was formed in 2013 by RENCI (the Renaissance Computing Institute) and the Data Intensive Cyber Environment (DICE) research group, both research institutes of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. NASA Langley ASDC will become the seventh member of the Consortium, which also includes RENCI, DICE, DataDirect Networks (DDN), EMC Corporation, Seagate, and the UK-based Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

“The ASDC faces big data challenges that require a robust data management solution, and iRODS is a perfect match for their needs,” said iRODS Consortium Executive Director Brand Fortner, PhD. “The ASDC will provide valuable input to the iRODS development team that will help iRODS meet the data management needs of the entire Earth sciences research community. We enthusiastically welcome them to the Consortium and look forward to many productive collaborations.”

About the iRODS Consortium

The iRODS Consortium is a membership organization that supports the development of the Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS), free open source software for data discovery, workflow automation, secure collaboration, and data virtualization. The iRODS Consortium provides a production-ready iRODS distribution and iRODS training, professional integration services, and support. The world’s top researchers in life sciences, geosciences, and information management use iRODS to control their data. Learn more at irods.org.

The iRODS Consortium is administered by founding member RENCI, a research institute for applications of cyberinfrastructure at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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